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Reaching the end of a narrow, crooked corridor that sloped downward, the turnkey unlocked a ponderous iron door with a huge key, and one of the guards following at Bucky's heels, pushed him forward. He fell down two or three steps and came to a sprawling heap on the floor of the cell. From the top of the steps came a derisive laugh as the door swung to and left him in utter darkness.
"Nobody will know why you left." "I would know, wouldn't I? I've got to go right on living with myself. I tell you straight I'm going to see it out." Bucky's jaw clamped. "Not if I know it. You're under arrest." Fendrick sat up in surprise. "What for?" he demanded angrily. "For robbing the W. & S. Express Company." "Hell, Bucky. You don't believe that." "Never mind what I believe.
The first shot of Bucky's revolver went through the heart of the outlaw; but so relentless was the man that, even after that, his twitching fingers emptied the revolver. O'Connor fired only once. He watched his opponent crumple up, fling wild shots into the upholstery and through the roof, and sink into the silence from which there is no awakening on this side of the grave.
"I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me," smiled Bucky to Miss Carmencita. "A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better." Bucky's eyes rested for a moment almost tenderly on Frances. "I reckon he is better worth knowing," he said. "Indeed! And you so brave, and patient, and good?" she mocked. "Oh! Am I all that?" asked Bucky easily. "So I have been given to understand."
It was a photograph of the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were lacking, to be sure the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky's confidence that Mackenzie had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook.
The cause of the latter's absence was soon made clear to him in a note he found waiting for him at the hotel: "The old man has just sent me out on hurry-up orders. Don't know when I'll get back. Suggest you take in the show at the opera house to-night to pass the time." It was the last sentence that caught Bucky's attention. Jim Malloy had not written it except for a reason.
Yet he finished the verse, though he was looking down the barrels of two revolvers in the hands of a pair of troopers, and though Lieutenant Chaves, very much at his ease, sat on the table dangling his feet. Bucky's sardonic laughter rang out gayly. "I ce'tainly didn't expect to meet you here, lieutenant. May I ask if you have wings?" "Not exactly, senor.
"If you stay, I shall," announced the boy Frank. "You'll do nothing of the kind, seh. You'll do just as I say, according to the agreement you made with me when I let you come," was Bucky's curt answer. "We're not playing this game to please you, Master Frank."
He snatched the curtains from the Arizonian and gathered them tightly together. "I'll thank you not to be so familiar," he said shortly from behind the closed curtains. "I beg your pahdon, your royal highness. I should have had myself announced and craved an audience, I reckon," was Bucky's ironic retort; and swiftly on the heels of it he added. "You make me tired, kid."
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